Friday, March 06, 2009

We live in wondrous times. For years I have seen bits and pieces of these notes that were the handouts from Walt Stanchfields drawing class at Disney and marveled at their clarity. Now two volumes of Stanchfield notes and art stretching over twenty years have been assembled and will be available this April.

A good overview can be found from a former student on The Animation Podcast here: http://animationpodcast.com/archives/2009/02/27/walt-stanchfield-books/

The following is just a portion of the review...

Walt had the most joyful, energetic spirit I have ever known. Yes, his classes were about drawing, but they were also about seeing, judging, storytelling, passion, life, creation, sports, clarity, art. “Live life dammit!” is something he would say. He’d tell us to ignore all that garbage we learned in anatomy class. He wanted us to make decisions in the drawings and tell a story through the image. If we drew the model exactly, he’d show us how more interesting it would be if we pushed the pose, moved the hand out here for clarity, tilt the chin to direct the viewer’s eye to where we want them to focus. He didn’t want us to draw what we saw, he wanted us to take in the idea and power it on to the page with verve and directness. He was so hooked on creativity. He’d sometimes share his latest drawings that he made while driving down the freeway from his home near Solvang!

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I did a post of this page of Walts Tiger notes before but it warrants a second look.